Why should a techie do pre-sales?

As a technologist, I used to always stay away from the world of sales. I hated it. And I hated sales guys even more. Because they would always sell some kind of service which we would either not have or not have currently.

A couple of years back, my boss wanted me to realize how stupid I was to think like that. He asked me to do pre-sales. In my opinion, a pre-sales consultant's job is the most discretely defined of all the positions that lead into the executive management space. A pre-sales consultant's primary responsibility is to convert a lead into a customer. Never was I faced with such a challenge in my entire technical career. All I have to make sure is not to lose a customer by delivering some crappy piece of software. Now that's preservation and not conversion.

This posed me immense challenges because my mindset had to change completely. From a cubicle-guy to a board-room guy. From a SQL-Editor guy to a Powerpoint-guy. From a internal-guy to an external-guy. The last point is very important. Pre-sales makes you more of an external guy. An external guy is one who understands the market. He is the one who understands the customer. He finds problems rather than solves problems.

So now, why should a techie learn pre-sales? Simple. To find problems. The more and more you grow up in your expertise ladder, you realize that you need to find problem patterns. As a senior consultant you are expected to know the problem before hand itself. And have a pattern available for the same. And pre-sales helps you to get into this mindset. Pre-sales will help you to lookout for problems before problem finds you. It will make you think in terms of broader problems and even broader solutions.

You talk to a pre-sales guy. He will give you the problem, design considerations and solution. You talk to a techie. He will ask you the problem and then he will give the design considerations and solution.